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Is your DS Lite starting to look a bit battered? Maybe the touch screen is an unresponsive mess of scratches, maybe you just dropped it down the toilet, oops. Well now you have the perfect excuse to upgrade when the Nintendo DSi is released on April 3rd. Being the third incarnation of the runaway success that is Nintendo's current handheld you might be wondering who there is left that doesn't already own a DS. This isn't just a cosmetic upgrade like the DS Lite though, the DSi is packed with new features.
Most obviously the DSi incorporates two mobile phone style cameras, one on the inside for video chat and one on the outside for taking pictures of something other than your own face. It also includes software to play around with your pics and similar software to let you play with any audio you record on the in-built microphone. An SD card slot for storing your pictures and recordings has been added, but to make way for it the larger cartridge slot has been removed. This means that you wont be able to play Game Boy Advance games or Guitar Hero On Tour on your DSi, but that's not much of a problem since if you have the games you must already own a handheld that plays them. Unless you really did drop it down the toilet...
The biggest potential though has to be it's greater use of the DS WiFi capabilities. Every DSi incorporates a web browsing application and Nintendo are setting up a DS Ware service to mirror the Wii Ware service. You will be able to browse an online store and buy small games, which download straight to the SD card. As yet they are only showing basic puzzle games and such, but if the potential is there for some quality titles, a la World Of Goo or Lost Winds, or even at the level of the more recent games available through iTunes then this could be a very good thing.
Other changes are less exciting. The screens are bigger but the resolution is the same so you could achieve the same effect by holding your DS Lite a few inches closer to your nose. The unit is thinner so better for handbags but wider so not as good for slipping into the pocket of little Billy's school jacket. Being slimmer also means that the battery will be thinner, combine that with the bigger screens and you could find you DSi needs charging more often. Finally both screens are now touch sensitive, how much impact this will have on the games we play remains to be seen.
So it's a mixed bag of tweaks to a great little machine. If you already own a DS Lite it is questionable if you need to upgrade just yet, maybe that will change if DS Ware takes off. If you don't already own a DS though it looks like Nintendo's DSi is what you have been waiting for!